Following on the apparently good start of the so-called Southern Growth Triangle between Singapore, the Johor state of Malaysia and the group of Indonesian islands of Riau, especially the island of Bataam, the idea of growth triangle spreads upward. The present six-country economic zone was actually an outgrowth of the former four-country growth area consisting of two northern provinces of Thailand, Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, Keng Tung in Myanmar, the areas of Luang Nantha and Bokeo in Laos, and Xichuangbanna in the south China province of Yunnan. Two more countries in the Mekong River basin, Vietnam and Cambodia, were later included in the ADB-supported Technical Assistance (TA) in 1992. The new geographical area was drawn, and the GMS was born.
In putting its weight behind the above economic cooperation, the ADB believes that such cooperation is a natural result of the play of market forces. The increasing liberalization of policies narrowly promoting self-sufficiency and centralisation has allowed trade and other forms of economic cooperation to increase rapidly. The increased exchange of goods and services would encourage specialisation and a more efficient use of human, capital and natural resources. In turn, the more productive use ofresources would enable the sub region to trade more effectively in global markets, yielding further gains in specialisation and technology acquisition, and as a consequence of the rapidly improving economic prospects in the subregion, foreign investment from advanced countries continue to flow in.
Despite the differences in economic endowment and stages of economic development among the countries in the subregion, the above six-country growth areas possess several common interests such as (From ADB, 1993)